"You seem to have plenty of cream," said the squire, walking round.
"Yes," answered mother; "our cows are doing well now, though Daisy will give richer cream to her pail than all the rest put together." Then she added, without looking at me, "Margaret, you need not do any more just now. Your father was asking for you. Go to him, and come back when he has done with you."
I wiped my arms silently, and turned down my sleeves. I had not said a single word since she had come in. She looked at me, but I would not return her glance. I was a wrong-headed, foolish girl, and when I thought that mother had been unjust to me I tried to make her suffer for it.
I walked straight out of the dairy without a word to any one, and it was not till I was outside that I saw that the squire had followed me. He was talking to me, so I had to listen him.
"Yes," I said, vaguely, in answer to him—for of course the remark, although I had not entirely caught it, had been about my sister, "yes, Joyce is very well; but she is not coming back just yet. I don't want her to come back just yet. I think it's so good for her to be away. When she is at home, mother wants her every minute. It isn't always to do something, but it's always to be there. And Joyce is good. She always seems pleased to have no free life of her own. But she can't really be pleased. I couldn't. Anyhow, it can't be good for her to be so dreadfully unselfish; do you think so?"
In my eagerness I was actually taking the squire into my confidence. He smiled.
"Miss Joyce always appeared to me to be very contented, doing the things about the house that your mother wished," said he. "You mustn't judge every one by yourself. People generally try to get something of what they want, I fancy. Your sister isn't so independent as you are."
"No," agreed I, gloomily, "she isn't. She's what folk call more womanly. I never was intended for a woman. Father always says I ought to have been a boy."
"I don't think women are all unwomanly because they're independent," said the squire. And then he added, in a lower voice, "I don't think you're unwomanly."
We had come round by the lawn, and we stood there a moment before the porch. The bees were busy among the summer flowers, and the scent of roses and mignonette, of sweet-peas and heliotrope, was heavy upon the air. The sun streamed down on our heads and upon the green marsh beneath the cliff and upon the sea in the distance. It was a bright, hot, June day. I was just going in-doors, when the squire laid his hand on my arm.